Theos-Talk Archives (June 1995 Message tl00044)

Reading further on in Bowen's "Occult Way" (did the first quote
come through about 2 days ago?) I find a passage about "Charity".
It makes my heart swell with pride because I think I have learned
do it fairly well as he describes it.  But then, alas comes the
last pargagraph, and, to be truthful, dear friends, I'm real
lousy at that.  Read on:

"Charity

It subsists not in an executive (love that word - lfd) self that
apportions objective benefits to selected recipients, but in a
Higher, inner Self that eternally gives of itself to Life,
through whatsoever instruments, or channels, conditions place at
its disposal: through synmpathy, through understanding, through
teaching that may lead others to virtue.  Of such a Self true
Charity is but another name.  Of it, it may truly be said: it
covers over not merely a multitude of sins, but all sin.  " (Will
someone please explain this last sentence to me.  It makes no
sense to me.)

...."There is no true Charity in the man who cannot give to the
inflictor of suffering an understanidng as perfect as the
sympathy which he gives to the sufferer, not can that man ever
manifest the Virtue of Harmlessness."

The one event, thinking of which I understood this last
parapgraph best, but which was also extremely hard was to slowly
realize that Germans who had been on the Nazi side during WWII
had suffered greatly as well as the persecuted.  I had a
colleague, around 1970-80 who'd spent the war in Berlin.  She
said she joined the Nazi youth organization because if she hadn't
the other kids in school would have beaten her up.  Her family
were awakened one night to weird noises from the house next door
from which a Jewish family, friends, were being taken to
concentration camp.  Her father managed a large war materiels
factory in that part of Germany taken by the Russians at the end
of the war.  She doesn't know what happened to him.  I met
another German woman who emigrated to the US.  As a young girl,
she had been raped by Russian soliders, while she & her girl
friend were taking a walk.  When you think of the twisted minds
of the SS men who tortured people, they could not possibly have
been at peace with themselves.  I can write this with sympathy,
and I know it's true that the Germans too suffered, but it's most
difficult for me to give them "an understanding as perfect as the
sympathy which he gives a the sufferer." I've stood in the middle
of Frankfurt (in 1972), listened to an ambulance syren chasing
by, & having to tell myself these aren't Nazis.  And I wasn't
even there for very long.  I heard all the stories from my family
when they came to the US bit by bit.  It had a terrible impact,
and I think most of us German Jews who are left have trouble
seeing where the Germans hurt.  It's difficult to practice the
Virtue of Harmlessness, but that is demanded of Theosophsts.
Well, I'm trying.

Liesel